Before Peace
by Ember Nickel
Summary: "In this century...the poet is often the committed revolutionary intoxicated with the struggle for freedom." A ghazal, and a story, from deep within the halls of Hogwarts. HP Friendship Fest 2013.


For HP Friendship 2013. Prompt: " He talks about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising like it's more magical than Hogwarts, and she listens because she wants to believe they'll make it out of this alive." Thanks to the wonderful nnozomi for betaing.

* * *

_Reflect on, or off, opaque cons before peace.  
How long will we squint at false dawns before peace?_

Thank you for coming.

If you're looking for Luna, she should be nearby, and I'm sure she'll be happy to talk with you, as much as she remembers. Granted, she missed several months of school, and yet here she is, all ready to begin her seventh year, right on time.

In some sense, I'm not too surprised that she of all people is still around. I'm glad she survived. Despite her youth, you know, she had practice at this. She'd thrown herself into the fights, slipping out of our house to go ally with the Gryffindors whether they liked it or not.

And, yes, there was a part of me that feared that, no matter the outcome of the battle, she'd still be here. At times she reminded me of another Ravenclaw who had tended to blurt out her ideas at not quite the opportune moment, who would fascinate the professors and unnerve the students. And so her classmates would be all too quick to mock her accessories, her flights of fancy, her father's trade...Well. Myrtle, too, is still here. Therein lies the rub.

But, as I said—oh, come again? You want to talk to _me_? Well, I'm flattered. If you hold on, I might be able to ask around for some of the essays, the notes passed in class, that sort of thing. But I wouldn't just stick to the dormitories, if I were you. There are other rooms where you can research.

You see, Hogwarts is much like the universe. Enormous, and full of magic and potential and wonder. Yet, in the aggregate, most of it is just empty space.

_We learned to cast shields in our mighty towers.  
We'd rather have climbed with the fawns before peace._

"Luna said that Neville said he was working on getting the meeting room open again."

Anthony nodded. "For practice?"

Padma read his face; he'd had his fill of practicing, of casting curses at equally-excited students. The time might already have come when their only targets were adults who knew what they were doing. They'd sooner play dumb than curse children who didn't know how to fight back. "Or to have somewhere to run away to."

"Oh, is that all? That's Neville for you. I found a place to hide out my first week here."

"Your first week here? What, is there some trap in the boys' dorms I don't know about?"

"I don't think there's much they could hide from you."

And he was right. The Ravenclaws, unlike their fellows in Gryffindor tower, had specific dorms assigned to _years_ rather than individual _classes_, so any given incoming class would get to rotate through all seven of the rooms and see correspondingly different views. By unspoken agreement, sometime in their fourth year or so Padma had begun to climb past their classmates studying below and join Anthony, Terry, and Michael in the boys' dorms. Sometimes they read sacred texts, listening to each other's voices fade into the castle's candlelight. Sometimes they talked about girls. Sometimes Michael would have read some silliness in a Muggle paper, and they'd brainstorm responses that they'd never dare to have owls deliver.

"All right, then," she smiled, "what's this?"

"I'll show you after Charms," he said, "we'll be close."

Padma squinted, but let the matter slide until, good to his word, Anthony pulled her aside after class. They turned corners until they constituted part of a stream of students, making their way towards—the library?

"Where are we..."

"Ssh," he said, "no talking loud, this is the _library_."

Padma rolled her eyes, and followed him past a row of study cartels where a group of fifth years, particularly irritated after being thrown into O.W.L. level Muggle Studies against their wills, were furiously cramming. "Restricted Section?"

Anthony ignored her, turning a corner into a section with lower ceilings. "There's so many books that'll do who-knows-what to you in there, that'd be about the worst place to make a stand. If the books don't get you, there must be evacuation tunnels so you can escape whatever they're oozing, and probably some professors could sneak back through."

Even "you've thought this out" seemed too obvious for Padma to mention, so instead she tried to shut up long enough to reach a bookshelf full of thin books. "Have a look," Anthony said proudly.

They seemed to cover all sorts of magical disciplines; Transfiguration on one shelf, Alchemy in the next, Astrology in yet another, with no respect for the card catalog system. Worse, when she flipped through them, they were utter _rubbish_. Half the content wouldn't have made it into _The Standard Book of Spells_ at any grade. The rest was jargon, and no more comprehensible. "This is complete _nonsense_!"

"It is," shrugged Michael, "Muggles wrote it."

"What?"

"It's pseudomagic. Not real magic—obviously—but good to have around. Recognize how much still slips past the Statute of Secrecy. Now, press _here_." He reached to the back of the shelf, and Padma followed suit. "And _push_."

The entire shelf began to rotate, and Padma saw it was well on its way to turning perpendicular before Michael lifted his hands. As soon as she'd done the same, it settled back into place.

"You get the point," he said. "This way."

Sure enough, tucked at the end of a row of astronomy treatises was a large shelf full of books about, not only Muggle astronomy, but all sorts of other kinds of science, and lifting books off the central shelf revealed similar places to rotate it. Behind a dry History of Magic shelf was another enormous shelf that seemed to describe all sorts of histories, many in alphabets Padma could not read. Anthony took a book off that shelf and tucked it under his arm before proceeding to one more shelf, full of Muggle literature.

"My aunt read this!" Padma gasped, paging through an anthology in the bottom row. "She'll be pleased, she's always saying Parvati and I don't read enough Muggle literature. Well, it depends on what you call..."

"What are you going to do, write to her?"

_In this climate?_ she heard his unspoken continuation. "Well, it's the principle of the thing."

"The shelves have to be shielded, right," he went on. "So the residual magic from the other books can't wear off. Rotate them all together, and you could be pretty secure in here for a good long while."

"Do you have any idea who built these?"

"No. I'm not even sure if it's the same person who put the Muggle books on _these_ shelves."

"But they fit so nicely!"

"But look, some of these are new, they wouldn't always have been there."

"Are you going to check that out?"

It was Madam Pince, as they headed for the exits. "Er...no. Sorry. Thanks!" Anthony grinned. "Head in the clouds, you know how it goes."

Padma hustled after as he speedwalked to replace the history book. "Is anything wrong?"

"I'm not sure if these Carrows are bright enough to visit the library, never mind demand people's checkout records, but I don't want to risk it," he said. "The less they know of these shelves, the better."

And so it wasn't till nightfall that, week after week, they'd creep back into the library for late-night "studying," and rotate the shelves into place until they formed a barricade of texts. Just in case.

_Then_ Anthony would read, although sometimes Padma caught his wide eyes full on and knew he could not be reading at all. "They fought for honor and not for survival, raised banners that the enemies who outnumbered them feared. They chose to resist, chose their places and times and holy days..."

It would take more lifetimes than anyone had, certainly longer than theirs, to read the books in that or any other library. A school surrounded them and it was, supposedly, their job to learn. If anyone had asked Padma, before, she would have said that there was not enough time for all the rest of history, too.

And yet there would always be stories: the poems her aunt loved, the Tales of Beetle the Bard—why, half of the _Daily Prophet_ was fictions in the worst way. (Having recognized that for what it was, Dumbledore's Army had run out of insults for the _Quibbler_, and Luna walked a little prouder thereafter.) For Padma, the stories of magic were found amid the flames and flags of a distant history. Why not? Next to them—the women and men who entrusted their lives to each other's courage, their deaths to each other's mercy—she was just an everyday teenager, still trying to pass her classes. Maybe she was no one special, but maybe that would be enough to see her through, if she kept her head down.

Sometimes Anthony would test the shelves, try and find out whether there were any cracks to send spells _out_ but not _in_, and when he did that he'd leave his books open under the light of Padma's _Lumos _while he recited from memory. Sometimes he'd turn to find she'd fallen asleep listening to him. Even then, she'd still have her essays done by the next morning.

_Until this glass shatters, it distorts starlight  
Or blends the clouds into the lawns before peace._

"We have to go to the Forbidden Forest?" Luna sighed.

"Yeah," said Neville. "Hey—look. I've been there a couple times, it's okay."

"A couple times?"

"Yeah."

"I know names can be deceiving—the Horrifying Haberforge is really not horrifying, once you get to know it—but isn't it meant to be a bit _Forbidden_?"

"Well, yes. So is stealing a sword."

With that she laughed until she'd doubled over, taking a few moments to wheeze and catch her breath, unconcerned. But when at last the initial merriment faded, she still did not smile.

Neville took her hand. "It's okay. The teachers go there."

"Some teachers can be criminals. Or ghosts. Or protected by Porval Elixir that they won't share."

"Hagrid even had class there."

Her hand stiffened under his. "If you're trying to be helpful, you're not doing a very good job."

"What's wrong with him? He's brave and—and good, there's no question whose side he's on."

"He's all—loud, and doesn't have anything in order." She didn't mention that, if the rumors were true, he'd never finished at Hogwarts. Neville would just tell her there was nothing wrong with not having finished school. But she already knew that. She and Neville and Ginny—and a whole lot of Dumbledore's Army, present or not—hadn't finished school yet either, and they had more sense than a lot of adults she knew.

But especially at times like those, it felt more important than ever to get through. The Death Eaters could take over the professors' offices, but what of that? She was used to being surrounded by people who didn't like her very much. As long as she had friends, and she could keep being where she belonged, they couldn't break her.

"All right, well," said Neville. "I think we should go. I mean, not skip it."

"Oh, I agree we really ought to." There were more than enough things to get in trouble for, real accomplishments maybe, that skipping detention was hardly worth it.

"So, is there anything we need to bring?"

"Our wands would probably be helpful."

"I mean, anything you can make. To keep us safe, or something. Like your lucky necklace."

"Oh, you mean like my Geoluread Orbs?" She pulled the necklace out from underneath her robes. She'd made it the previous week instead of learning Unforgivable Curses in "Defense" class. Carrow had been very cross with her, but Glaw Argall had said she was just being loony as usual. Glaw had called her loony through most of their first few years, and maybe even hid her things as well, but of course Luna had never seen whoever did that.

But that year the same old insult was enough for Carrow to roll his eyes and move on. Maybe it was just trying to cling to the same, easy targets. Maybe it was an act of resistance. Whether in haughtiness or fear, Glaw still wouldn't talk to her.

"Yeah," said Neville, "like that."

"Those are for luck."

"Well...yeah. Maybe we could use some luck."

Luna shook her head. "I don't think you understand. We shouldn't trust to luck, you know, because it might go the wrong way. As long as you and Ginny are coming along, I'm not too scared. Besides, we need the time to practice."

"That's the way. All right."

"Forbidden to steal a sword..." she repeated, giggling again.

"Maybe not. Maybe they didn't think anyone would be cool enough to try that, they probably never got around to officially making it a rule."

"Oh, no, I think you're right. Besides, it was very funny."

_They huddle below us, afraid to profess.  
Is faith just a garment for dons before peace?_

Terry hadn't known about the moving bookshelves until Anthony brought them up, trying to sing through a couple psalms one night. Each of them was convinced that the other was a far superior singer and he, himself, shouldn't have bothered, a humble symmetry that kept them going.

What he _had_ known about, since second year, was the science section. When the most obviously "acidic" thing in Potions class was Professor Snape's sense of humor, and the most clearly "base" thing was how base and foul most of the ingredients smelled, it was a relief to convince himself that no, he hadn't gone mad. There were still such things as the patterns of chemistry, and they still made sense.

So when Anthony mentioned that, in fact, the chemistry and physics books combined with all the others to form a barricadeable enclosure, Terry at first wondered whether it would be possible to wall himself off and just do science inside for a little while. Titrated solutions, suspended solutions, any kind of solutions at that point would do.

It didn't take long for him to realize that wasn't going to work. You still had to bring a bunch of test tubes into the library, and secret room or no secret room, having that much liquid in the range of the magical books was never a good idea.

But it was an excuse to go back to reading chemistry. People trying to explain some of the very smallest things they knew, electrons around a nucleus, by appealing to some of the largest, planets circling a sun. It was only an approximation, and they knew that, but at least they tried.

He could imagine the day when Muggles found out about magic. Well, he could imagine the wizarding world being shattered and Muggles learning about their new overlords by force—that was all too easy to think of—but he could also imagine a different future, and the weeks and months and years that would follow. There would be people using it as an excuse to dump everything they knew about science out the window (having never really understood it in the first place), people believing that wizards were a threat and trying to kill them (which was probably why that day was going to be a long way off), people assuming that wizards would make the most moral and competent leaders (despite the abysmal job they were doing managing their own affairs), people deciding that science had gone far enough and could basically stop there (when there was still so much more left to understand). And then, the voices that had been there all along, if drowned out, would pipe up again, reminding the world that the way people learned from each other, really learned, had never been through stepping on each other's toes but in awe and gratitude.

That was how it had always gone. It was the same whenever people learned something new, when faith met new knowledge. Eventually, if you waited long enough, people would learn to step out of each other's way and into an elegant dance. The ones who got it right were the ones Terry wanted to be proud of, in advance.

He wasn't sure whether he'd be around to see it, but for once, his doubts had nothing to do with his chances of living through the ongoing regime. He could pray for understanding in the distant future. And then, with Anthony and Michael and Padma and the rest, ready himself to make a stand for the near one.

_No matter the news, we are drawing stark lines,  
Still prodding our black and white pawns before peace._

Anthony ducked low as he reached for another piece of candy. Above him, a pair of blue wings fluttered past. They weren't attached to anything in particular, just hovering slightly over his head before dipping down to fly circles around Chambers the Chaser.

"Drink, Anthony?" Mandy Brocklehurst, the Head Girl, cheerfully offered. She, of course, had not been a prefect two years prior—neither had Nott, the Head Boy from Slytherin. The choice of Nott had thrown Anthony, at first—not that he was expecting to be named Head, really, but wouldn't the Death Eaters rather pick one of their own lackeys? Maybe they were pretending to be balanced.

But what had made them _avoid_ him, or Padma or Ernie or Hannah, or Ron wherever he was? Did Snape _know_ who was who? But he hadn't gone after them...

"Anthony?" Mandy repeated, somewhat more concerned.

"Sorry," he muttered, "long day. What do you have, Butterbeer?"

"I was thinking something a bit more celebratory," she winked.

"You're ridiculous."

"Ah well," she tossed her hair back. "Cheers to the champions, eh?"

The Ravenclaw Beaters, a pair of brothers, filled up glasses of what Anthony could only assume was Firewhiskey, bashed them together, impressively managing not to spill, and took swigs. Their contribution to the game, so far as he could reckon, was one part impressive work with the bats, two parts promises of a toasty post-game celebration should their teammates pull off a victory, and three parts making up insults of the Slytherins to match the ripostes they were receiving. Or, not insults. "I shay," slurred the victorious Keeper, "we should all be...Muggle-loversh. Ish better, for shociety. Lookit their Chasher, Shlytherin, he'sh been...shnogging that..."

"Well," Padma stepped up alongside Anthony, "that's one way towards the ideals of a fairer society."

"I suppose," said Anthony. "Hold still, you've got wings in your hair."

"I—what?" But she obligingly stood still, as he reached out to extricate a pair of small, greenish wings from her plait. About butterfly-scale, they beat off to join their fellows milling around the top of the tower.

"How did these get in here?"

"I have no idea."

"The Beaters brought 'em!" said one of the new prefects. The fifth-year had officiously declined Mandy's offer of Firewhiskey, but was not too mature to pick out his favorite candies from the common pot.

"Right," said Anthony. "Any idea what would have happened if Ravenclaw _lost_?"

"If we lost?" he said. "Er...I dunno. I think Flitwick had something to do with it."

"They're pretty, aren't they?" Padma stretched out her hand, and a large pair of orange wings with yellow streaks settled onto it. They beat slowly, clearing a space around her as Anthony looked on, laughing.

"I suppose," the prefect finally said, "if you like...that sort of thing."

His friend Ryan waved him over from across the room, and Anthony shook his head. "Mental."

"Flitwick, really?" Padma asked. "I didn't think he was into Quidditch rivalries."

"It's a nice charm, though, I suppose."

"It's not a charm if you're conjuring wings from thin air," Luna piped up.

"Oh hullo Luna, didn't see you there," Padma smiled. "Were you at the match?"

"Oh yes! But Flitwick or whoever made these must have based them off something else. Like the Ministry memos, which are color-coded based on which level of the Chensingbury Conspiracy people have access to. Or," she dropped her voice, "the Clavis Collection."

"You...might not want to go on about conspiracies in public," Anthony waved his hand. "People would hear."

"Oh the Clavis Collection was common knowledge! Up until about fifty years ago, the Keeper of Keys has really let his standards drop. But everyone used to know about the keys that could get you into every room in the building. One for each room."

"Don't you think some of that's an exaggeration?" said Padma. "I mean, the only way to get into _here_ is by answering the questions."

Michael stepped over to join them, Terry in his wake. "That's not an _only_ way, is it? There can be more than one right answer."

"People say that," said Terry, "but then they make too much of it. It's not like—everything's true and we can't know anything, it's just, there can be answers we expect, as well as answers that surprise us."

Across the room, a pair of wings separated, each one landing on the shoulders of a different Beater. "Cheers," they echoed, and drank again to victory.

_There's poison in vials; in greenhouses, rot.  
That isn't the worst the school spawns before peace._

After giving the matter measured and due consideration, Michael decided that he was surrounded by idiots.

The Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, for one. Were idiots. Specifically, the little ones, who'd followed Neville's lead or talked Ernie into showing them where the meetings were, who looked up—literally—to Hannah or Seamus until they were let into the secret room. Who had no idea what they were getting themselves into, what the stakes were that time around, who to listen to, whether they were skiving off class to show what they believed in, or because they just liked the idea of skiving off class.

For that matter, the other Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were also idiots. Who _let_ the others come along, despite being old enough to know better. As if having more people along was going to do them any good, instead of just leading to even more arguments. It wasn't like any of _them_ had volunteered to come along, that night. Nor would he have let them, if they had.

His friends, for all their talents, represented a more refined strain of idiocy. Meeting room full of new recruits? Fine, just go bunker down in the library, as if that would help. Oh, he'd loved talking philosophy with them, bouncing ideas off each other like so many sparks passing in the night, even kept up with it to give them some dream of normalcy. And yet, even Anthony realized that for all the lofty ideas and noble sentiments found in books, their potentially most useful trait was that they were solid bits of dead tree. The sort of things you could build up all around you and let _them_ be cursed, ripped apart, shredded back to front, instead of you.

As for the Slytherins, of course they were idiots. They almost didn't deserve the name. Your average idiot would show it off, after all, with a "Duh...what?" "Er...come again?" "Wotsitnow?" The Slytherins just smiled along, saying nothing as the third Minister in as many years took office, as new policies fell into line. Maybe silence would buy them time. Or maybe the inconsistent, absurd lunatics in power would change their minds and instead go after their one-time allies, who'd look too Confunded to have seen it coming.

The Squibs and half-breeds and Beasts who scrubbed the same floors, taught from the same textbooks, didn't flee, were obviously idiots. Maybe they had an excuse—maybe their only other worlds to fall back on were in just as much danger from Death Eaters as the wizarding world was. More danger, if they didn't know how to fight back. But all the same.

Dumbledore himself must have been some kind of idiot. Greatest wizard of their day, getting killed just in time to leave the world defenseless and the school in the hands of Severus Snape? There was never talk of a name change. He was dead, and they would still be his army, until perhaps they too were struck down and accomplished nothing for it. If nothing else, maybe their names would live on, like his had. Almost a joke, less than a memory.

And then, there had been the special type of first-year idiocy he must have been prone to in a safer time. He didn't know whether the girl had been too incompetent to cast her curses, or able to think things through and realize she didn't want to, or what. In some sense, he didn't want to know. Get too close to her, and she'd only prove to be a disappointment—too obsessed with her pets or looking cute or some Quidditch celebrity, whatever eleven-year-old-girls liked. Certainly not worth his time and pain. As long as he could stop thinking of her as a person, but rather just a symbol—no one had been ever been put in _chains_ before, that was a new low even for the administration—he could justify going down to cut her free. He wasn't a blood traitor and he wasn't a lovesick fool and he wasn't any kind of hero, but maybe, every once in a while, he could do the right thing.

And that wasn't even getting into the Carrows. Now those two were a pair of idiots if he'd ever seen them. Couldn't make up coherently false lesson plans. Couldn't deal with their graffiti, their walkouts, their resistance. Somehow had lit on the idea that chaining up a first-year was a good idea.

And in their dumbest move, by far, they'd decided to curse him. As if that would prove them to be in the right, show the great moral coherence of their system. All the misguided curricula they'd come up with, and _this_ was the best they could do, hexes and, when they got bored of them, crude weapons? Hogwarts had never been well-run at the best of times, he thought, remembering Ginny's quiet stories and Neville's blushing confessions, Luna's plainspoken explanations and his own, tentative, dates with Cho. But if they thought torturing him was a victory—

So he laughed, as the curses rang out. Laughed because if that was the worst they could do to him, then really, there was nothing more they could do to him. Laughed because it'd egg them on, the next blow would knock him out, and then the pain would fade until his friends would be there. And through his scars and jeers he'd explain to them that no, none of them, young or old, were worth it. But what they were, together—they were all worth it.

_The lotus will wilt and the towers will fall.  
You alone will endure in bronze before peace._

So you see, I caught glimpses of all of them. Mostly before the battle—even Luna returned, before the fighting broke out at last. And if you step inside, just a moment, you'll find Padma's poems, find everything they wrote last year. As much as we could gather together.

The room of hidden things, as you well know, was caught up in flame. Most every room saw its part—there are curse marks on plenty of walls, including those of the library. The Muggle books are still there, too, although there's talk of moving them again.

I'm torn. On the one hand, it does little good to retroactively try and put them out on wide display, show off how much progress we've made in this brighter, safer era. There are scars that cannot be healed, and magic cannot raise the dead. What good does it do their memory, to dust off the jackets of other texts?

On the other, well, of _course_ we need to be showing off different books, because we _always_ need to be finding new ones. Think of this school, and everything that has echoed through these halls. Old Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, new Latin incantations and words brought in with the waves of a spreading empire, then even more as people come and go, grow and learn...

I know this, because I have spoken them all. I have asked questions in English and Welsh and Irish and Scots, and Hindi and Marathi and Hebrew and a hundred more. I have seen students do double-takes, then smile and, haltingly, stammer an answer. Sometimes I know to wait, that they want to practice their grammar or vocabulary, and sometimes I know that the answer they give is the right one, that it is in how it's said as much as what they say. They need constraints to give their meaning shape, one part of the message encompassing the other, lock in key.


End file.
